The words echoed in the clearing, raw and jagged and loaded with promises I wasn't sure I could keep. Wolves lowered their heads in respect, and I saw Evan flinch like I'd hit him.
“I'm done being blind,” I continued, momentum carrying me forward into territory I hadn't planned to explore. “I want to fight. I need to fight.”
Murmurs rippled through the assembled pack, voices layering over each other in harmonies of approval and doubt. Some nodded like they understood. Others looked skeptical, like a grieving human demanding to join their war was more liability than asset.
But I didn't care what they thought. I cared about the fact that Mom was dead and the bastards responsible were still breathing.
Daniel stepped closer, studying me with the kind of attention that felt like being dissected. “Do you understand what you're asking? Once you step into this world, there's no halfway. You carry the blood and risk of it until you die.”
His words weren't unkind, but they carried weight that pressed against my shoulders like physical force. This was a test, I realized. A challenge to see if grief had made me stupid or if I actually understood what joining their war would cost.
“I already carry it,” I said, meeting his gaze without flinching. “My mother's dead because of this. If I do nothing, it'll happen again. To someone else's family. Someone else's mom.” The fury in my voice surprised me, how steady it sounded despite the fact that my hands were shaking. “So teach me, or get out of my way.”
Evan gripped my arm, fingers digging in hard enough to leave bruises. “No. You don't have to do this. This isn't your fight.”
I turned on him, eyes burning with tears I refused to let fall. “It became mine the second she screamed and I couldn't save her. It became mine the moment those monsters decided my family was acceptable collateral damage for their fucking power games.”
Evan's face crumpled, wolf stirring under his skin in ways I could see in the shift of his posture, the way his eyes flashed gold in the moonlight. But he didn't have an answer for that. Couldn't argue with the logic of someone who'd just learned that staying out of supernatural politics didn't actually keep you safe from them.
Gideon stepped forward from where he'd been lurking at the edge of the circle, then turned and walked back toward the tree line. When he returned a moment later, he carried something wrapped in dark cloth that he unwound carefully.
A bow. Recurve, maybe five and a half feet long, made from what looked like polished hardwood that seemed to glow faintly in the moonlight. The grip was wrapped in leather worn smooth by use, and the whole thing had the elegant simplicity that spoke of function over form.
“Then start here,” he said quietly, holding it out along with a leather quiver full of arrows that gleamed with silver points. “The bow teaches patience before blood. Control before rage. If you mean what you're saying, this will be your first step.”
I stared at the weapon, heart hammering against my ribs like it was trying to escape. My hands trembled as I reached for it, fingers closing around wood that felt warm and solid and absolutely right in ways that made no logical sense.
The bow was heavier than I'd expected, weight distributed perfectly along its length. The arrows were works of art, fletched with gray feathers and tipped with silver that had been etched with symbols I didn't recognize but somehow understood meant death to things that shouldn't exist.
“Silver-laced,” Gideon said, noticing my attention to the arrowheads. “Iron core, silver coating. They'll punch through supernatural hide like it's paper, and the silver will make sure whatever you hit stays down.”
I brushed my thumb along one of the symbols, reverent as a prayer. “I'll learn,” I whispered, more to myself than anyone else. “I'll learn, and I'll make them pay for what they took from me.”
Evan exhaled hard, turning away with his jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth. He couldn't watch me accept this path, couldn't stand to see me choosing violence over safety. But he didn't try to stop me again, and maybe that was its own kind of acceptance.
Daniel studied the scene with unreadable eyes, Alpha mind weighing costs and benefits in ways I was only beginning to understand. Finally, he inclined his head once, formal as a king acknowledging a knight.
“Then let it be so,” he said, voice carrying the weight of ritual and binding. “But know this, Nate. If you falter, if you let grief blind you to strategy, it will kill you faster than Calder's claws ever could.”
The words weren't just warning. They were acknowledgment, acceptance, the formal recognition that I was no longer just the human who'd stumbled into their world by accident.
Dad and I were pack now. Family. Someone worth training to fight and die alongside them.
Gideon approached the pyre, hands beginning to glow with that soft blue light that still made my brain stutter trying to process it. Magic. Real fucking magic, wielded by a man who'd taught me how to change oil and fix carburetors and keep my mouth shut when adults were talking.
“She was loved,” he said simply, and flames bloomed from his palms like flowers made of starfire.
The wood caught with a sound like a sigh, fire racing along the carefully stacked logs with supernatural swiftness. Heat bloomed outward, washing over the assembled pack in waves that made the air shimmer and dance.
I watched my mother burn, bow clutched in hands that had stopped shaking. Watched smoke carry her essence up toward stars that seemed closer tonight, brighter, like they were leaning down to receive what the flames offered.
The fire roared higher, sparks trailing toward the moon like prayers made visible. Orange and gold and pure white heat that turned everything it touched to light and memory and ash that would nourish the earth when spring came again.
“Goodbye, Mom,” I whispered, words lost in the sound of burning wood and the distant howl of wolves greeting the night.
But the vow in my chest burned hotter than any flame Gideon could conjure. I was no longer a bystander in someone else's war. I was a combatant, armed and trained and ready to paint the forest red with the blood of anyone stupid enough to threaten the people I loved.
Anna Harrington had raised a son who understood that some things were worth fighting for. Worth bleeding for. Worth killing for.
